


Mares’ tails and mackerel scales

by Eliane62



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Sanvers Summer Crush 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-06-30 05:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eliane62/pseuds/Eliane62
Summary: The door is still open, revealing the dark cloud filling the fifty square feet cell. Rain is pouring, and the wind is so strong Maggie can already feel the icy water on her face. As a sudden lightning bolt blinds her, she’s convinced her heart stops when the thunder roars almost at the same time.





	Mares’ tails and mackerel scales

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lurkz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurkz/gifts).



> A gift for Lurkz, for the Sanvers Summer Crush 2019. I hope you'll like it!

The DEO is unusually silent as Maggie pushes the entrance doors open, a takeout bag in one hand. Her friendly node to the front desk agent - Davis, if she remembers well - only gets her a tensed smile in return, as he prepares the familiar visitor badge. As soon as the card switches hands, the agent goes back to his computer screen, a low "You know the way" muttered at her intent.

Maggie frowns but doesn't comment on the curious exchange. She may be too used to the friendliness of the other receptionist, Moore, currently on maternity leave. Davis is a new guy, recently transferred from the National City offices of another governmental agency. Well, an agency less crazy on the extranormal side than the DEO. Any relaxed person could get at least a little bit nervous after an ordinary day in this alien-oriented organization.

Except that the DEO open space is also definitely too quiet when Maggie finally walks into it. Most of the agents are gone, hopefully on nothing worse than an early lunch break. It’s not noon yet, and Alex doesn’t even expect her here, but the precinct was too boring for Maggie to wait another hour and a half for her lunch date with her fiancée. Of course, stopping at their favorite Indian place for some takeout without checking first that Alex was indeed available was potentially a bold and hasty move. Worst case, they’ll warm it up. At least, that’s what she thought a few minutes ago.

And Maggie doesn’t consider herself as an easily worried person. She’s a detective, thus stressful situations are part of her daily life. She can’t afford to be constantly on edge. Nevertheless, as she notices Agent Vasquez standing up at her approach, a grave look on her face, she gets slightly concerned that she may not get to eat her lamb curry at all.

“Detective Sawyer! We didn’t know you’ll be that fast, this is perfect! Director J’onzz, Agent Danvers and Supergirl are waiting for you in Block D.”

Maggie doesn’t register Vasquez’s words until she’s left with another agent, a tall guy that walks so fast she almost has to run behind him. They’re already out of the open space, halfway toward their destination. Block D is an uncommon place to meet J’onn and the Danvers sisters, except under extraordinary circumstances. Maggie knows there are some interrogation rooms there – she’s been in a few of those, whenever her precinct and the DEO end up working on joined cases – and several detention cells for low-level threats. Nowadays, most of these cells are empty. They used to contain aliens held for petty theft and other mild crimes. Since the Alien Amnesty Act, most of these offenses are now handled by the NCPD Science Division and then go through the normal judiciary system. Every week, the DEO gets a little further away from the dark anti-alien Age it was coming from.

Maggie is thus surprised when the agent leads her to these cells. She doesn’t remember any of her recent cases that could have required the DEO expertise. As Alex hasn’t mentioned either an investigation that would be relevant to the Science Division, something must have come up this morning. They may have called her precinct to request her, explaining why Vasquez was expecting her.

The cells are supposed to be decently soundproofed, but as they get closer to the last one, a rumble grows, predicting how deafening the noise must be inside the room. Instead of opening the door, the agent steps back.

“They’re here.”

Without waiting for her to get inside, the agent turns around, moving even faster than before. Whatever was in this room, it was scary enough to make him run away. Turning back to the door, Maggie swallows, her food long forgotten. With a sigh, she puts her hand on the knob and almost falls forward when the door opens by itself. As she catches herself, Winn appears in front of her. He’s drenched, water droplets running from his hair to his chin, and a probably destroyed computer tablet in his hands. As Winn looks down to Maggie to greet her, he keeps shaking the device, in a desperate attempt to dry it. Behind him, the door is still open, revealing the dark cloud filling the fifty square feet cell. Rain is pouring, and the wind is so strong she can already feel the icy water on her face. As a sudden lightning bolt blinds her, she’s convinced her heart stops when the thunder roars almost at the same time.

A hand on her shoulder awakens Maggie from her stupor. Focusing again on Winn, she notices him speaking, but their surrounding is too loud for her to understand any of his words. Other people are shouting inside the storm, all of them as unintelligible as Winn, but she recognizes one of these voices. She moves past Winn to enter the room, her free hand above her eyes as hopeless protection against the rain.

As expected, Alex is there, only a few steps in front of Maggie, her back facing her. She’s furious and… terrifying. She’s pointing towards the ceiling above her head, which appears to be the epicenter of the storm. Kara, in her Supergirl clothes, tries to reach Alex, pleading her to calm down. J’onn is next to the younger Danvers, and the usually impassive man doesn’t hide his relief when he notices the newcomer.

Maggie calls for her fiancée, then grips her arm when she doesn’t get any reaction to her voice. Alex jumps, startled by the unexpected pressure, and as she turns around another lightning bolt strikes, blinding the room. Then, as sudden as the roar of the thunder, the wind dies and the rain goes from the heavy downpour that had soaked them to a drizzle.

“Maggie?”

On the ceiling, the dark and dense cloud becomes lighter, shrinking to a flat, uniform layer of gray. While it was covering the entire cell a few seconds before, the unstable element is now reduced to a few feet square above her fiancée’s head.

Maggie doesn’t even notice the drenched takeout paper bag breaking in her hand, her cold Indian food spilling onto the floor. Instead, she stares at the extranormal cloud still very much present in the room.

“What the hell?”

\----------

“So, you’re telling me you got surprised by a teenage girl, who somehow gave you a pet cloud, that was way too excited less than half an hour ago?”

Once the storm was over, they had left the flooded and now unusable cell, switching to one of the interrogation rooms. On their way there, the cloud had evolved again to a white, thin layer above Alex’s head, the rain fully stopping shortly before that.

It’s only the two of them in the room, now. They’re eating some pizza that Kara brought them as a replacement for their wasted takeout lunch.

“She was an alien! How was I supposed to know she’ll go all Jupiter on me?” Alex protests.

“Jupiter, hum?” Maggie chuckles. “She was a kid, not a God…”

“Well, a kid powerful enough to concern the DEO regarding meteorological local anomalies.”

Maggie doesn’t comment, thoughtful. Finding young aliens experimenting around with their powers is not uncommon in National City. Usually, their own families warn them against doing so, to avoid getting too much attention in a world where their kinds can still face discrimination daily. But there always comes a time where teenagers push against the limitations imposed by their parents, no matter where they are from.

“And neither Kara nor J’onn has heard about a species that matches these abilities?”

“Correct,” Alex nods. “Which could either mean it’s a species they don’t know about or a species whose abilities are different on Earth and hasn’t been encountered here yet.”

“We’re talking about a potential newcomer, then,” Maggie deduces.

Her fiancée stays quiet, taking another slice instead. There’s pineapple on it, and Maggie remembers lively arguments about what belongs on a pizza and what doesn’t before she had caved in and tried out the flavor. She’s still not convinced by the sweet and salty taste, but it’s Alex’s favorite and she needed the solace.

“She was very young, though,” her fiancée recalls, her eyes set on the pizza box she has been shredding apart during their discussion. Maggie noticed this habit months ago, during one of their early dates. Whenever she’s nervous or figuring out the answer to the universe, her hands get their own mind, usually at the expense of any paper or cardboard lying around. “15 years old, maybe? If she’s new on Earth, or at least in National City, she may not have come alone.”

“Let’s hope you’re right on that,” she sighs. She doesn’t need to develop her thoughts for Alex to understand. No one that young should be left on their own.

On the table, her phone lights on with a new text. Maggie recognizes the name – Lopez, another detective from the Science Division - but doesn’t check the message.

“You need to go?”

Alex has looked up from the box, watching as Maggie stands up. Her voice wavers, evidence of her apprehension. Hours after her interaction with this teenage girl, the cloud is still above her head, morphing back to a gray layer. Maggie still hopes it will disappear throughout the day, but so far, they have no understanding of its purpose or mechanism.

“Yes. I’m late to the precinct, but they’ll have to wait a little longer.”

She picks up her jacket and finally checks her text. As suspected, Lopez is messing around, wondering whether she has lost her way back from the DEO. Since learning about her engagement to the “competition”, he has been teasing her about whether she will turn to the dark side and join the DEO one day. Maggie loves too much her Science Division for that to ever happen, but the threat of her going elsewhere works wonders whenever she needs a favor from him.

“You and I got a new case to work on,” Maggie continues, answering to the puzzled look of her fiancée. “I was thinking about going to the bar. It’s probably not busy yet, but M’gann should be there already. With her business, she has become an alien encyclopedia, so it could be a good place to start.”

Maggie opens the door of the interrogation room, then stops her exit when she notices Alex isn’t following her.

“You’re not coming?”

“I can’t,” Alex sighs. She hasn’t moved from her chair, nervously fiddling with the armrest. There’s not much left of the pizza box, the shreds of paper amassed together in a fuzzy heap. Above her head, the rain starts falling again, and Alex flinches at the first drops on her forehead.

“I can’t go around in the city with an unpredictable pet cloud.” She tries to smile, but her wince can’t hide her distress.

Maggie closes the door, unsure of how to comfort her fiancée. She moves her chair closer to Alex and takes one of her hand as she sits down.

“Hey, we’ll figure it out, okay?” She hopes she’s convincing enough. “Most of the DEO resources are used to find this alien, and I can put some of my guys on it too. And yeah, the next few hours are going to suck.” Maggie smiles as her fiancée chuckles. “But you won’t go through this alone. I’ll be back later today, I hope with good news.”

She pauses, wondering how to keep Alex busy while she’s stuck here.

“Maybe Winn can find you some waterproof tablet, so you can work from here. Or you can still help around in the DEO, with a good umbrella.”

The image would be hilarious in another context and it’s enough to cheer Alex up. Kissing her goodbye, Maggie finally notices the absence of water on her face. Looking up, she smiles.

“See, even your pet changed back to some fluffy white cotton.”

“It’s a cumulus, not some common cotton,” Alex rolls her eyes, amused.

“Whatever, nerd.” After another kiss, Maggie stands up again. “I’ve got to go, stay positive meanwhile. I’ll tell Winn to come by to help you out.”

As she closes the door behind her, Maggie takes another glance to her fiancée. Her smile now reaches her eyes. With the tiny puff above her head, she looks surprisingly cute, considering the circumstances.

As she leaves the Block D, the detective sighs. Damn, she can’t wait to marry this girl.

\----------

Sadly, M’gann isn’t very helpful. She has no knowledge of a species that could affect the weather to such extend, nor has heard about a new alien matching the description Alex gave her earlier. Even worse, she emits a new hypothesis.

“Are we sure the girl is an alien?”

Maggie ponders the question. In fact, they’re not. They only assumed.

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“Enhanced individuals?” M’gann shrugs, seemingly not convinced by her own suggestion. “Your fiancée has already met people like that, hasn’t she?”

Maggie remembers Kara’s friend, from another Earth – she still has a hard time comprehending the existence of a multiverse –, whose meta-human abilities developed after being struck by lightning during the explosion of a particle accelerator. In National City, she has only heard about Livewire, who gained powers after a helicopter accident. They cannot be the only individuals that went through such life-changing events.

“Listen,” M’gann continues, “you can try bothering my clients, see if any of them knows more about the person you’re looking for. I’ll spread the word too and I’ll let you know if anything comes out of it.”

\----------

Maggie leaves the bar disappointed. Only a few of her usual informants were available in this mid-afternoon, and none of them had a clue that could help her. She hopes the rest of her day won’t be as unsatisfying.

She stops by her precinct, where her Captain only gets exasperated when she explains the current situation. Despite his grumbles, he allows her to keep working on the case, provided that none of her other investigations gets affected by this “distraction”. To be fair, even without his agreement, Maggie would have looked into this cloud issue, at least in her free time. On her way out, she describes the problem to Lopez, asking him to contact her if they hear of anything weather-related.

Her next stop is to the docks. She doesn’t expect to find anything there, as the DEO has already combed through the warehouse in which Alex had found out the teenage girl. But these agents are alien experts. They deal with fights and crimes and organizations that leave so much damage on their path they don’t need to dig much to find a clue. Meanwhile, Maggie is a detective. She can thrive with the coldest cases – or, at least, she has fun trying to solve them.

As she stands in the middle of the warehouse, Maggie goes back to basics. For a minute, she stops thinking as Maggie Sawyer, 30 years old, detective of the NYPD Science Division and fiancée of a nerdy Special Agent. Right now, she’s a teenage girl experimenting with weather powers in an unused depot, disturbed and frightened by a complete stranger.

\----------

Later, she finds Alex on the DEO’s rooftop, sitting against a wall. Above her head lays a dark layer of gray, thick enough to block her from the sun. She must be so cold from the steady rain falling on her, but the woman doesn’t even appear to care anymore.

While the thunderstorm from earlier was terrifying, witnessing this scene only feels depressing.

Opening the umbrella she took with her to the roof, Maggie sits next to her fiancée, shielding them from the rain. The floor is so soaked that she immediately winces at the feeling of her damp jeans on her skin. For a moment, she wonders whether Alex is too lost in her thoughts to notice her, until her fiancée takes her free hand into hers, squeezing it tightly.

“How did you…”

“Vasquez told me I’ll find you there,” Maggie answers softly. “Want to explain what happened?”

Alex shrugs, so Maggie waits, not wanting to rush her. She looks up to the cloud, wondering what it must mean.

“Most of the afternoon was fine,” Alex mumbles, her eyes set on the hands between them. “Winn came by soon after you left, and I was able to work for a while in the cell. Honestly, after a few hours, I only had a thin cirrus above my head, so I thought the cloud was about to disappear.”

Moving Maggie’s hand to her lap, she starts playing with her fingers, rolling the engagement ring around.

“I wanted to test some water samples from the thunderstorm rain, hoping it would help me figure out where it was coming from. So, I went to the lab.” She sighs, then rolls her eyes. “The samples were completely pointless, which was frustrating. I did again some test, and then before I know it, the rain started again, so I ran to the terrace. It was way too noticeable from the rest of the city, so Kara flew me to the rooftop. Guess I’ve been hiding away since then.”

Leaving the ring alone, she starts massaging Maggie’s hand, wincing when the joints crack.

“Wait, you mean I had to take the stairs all the way to the roof when I should have asked Kara for a ride? That’s unfair!”

Her fiancée chuckles at Maggie’s faux outrage.

“The last time you flew with her, you threw up as soon as you were back on stable ground.”

“It only happened once,” she protests.

“That was the only time you traveled with her,” Alex scoffs. She pauses, then smiles, understanding the other woman’s intent. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?”

“Is it working?” Maggie grins.

Her fiancée leans into her, kissing her softly. “Maybe,” she whispers, before resting her head on Maggie’s shoulder. As Alex finally releases her hand, she takes the opportunity to wrap her free arm around the woman’s waist. She still holds tightly the umbrella, but the rain has let up during their conversation. Curious, Maggie moves the canopy rearward.

“I don’t get it,” Alex mumbles, annoyed by the new metamorphosis. “I’ve waited an hour under the rain, not knowing how to stop it, but now that you’re here the nimbostratus kindly goes away.”

The small lightning bolt that follows the statement is unexpected, and that’s when Maggie chuckles. An irritated Alex has always been quite… explosive.

“You really have no idea?” she teases, her hand moving again to poke her fiancée.

Alex moves slightly away from her, raising her head enough to give her a puzzled look.

“What do you mean?”

Maggie winces, wondering how tactful she should be for the conversation to follow.

“Well,” she hesitates, “do you remember how the thunderstorm started?”

Alex shrugs.

“Not really. I was describing what happened at the docks. We were all concerned about what the cloud could do, even if it didn’t look menacing at that time, just a small and gray rounded mass above my head.”

She pauses and frowns, trying to recollect the scene.

“J’onn was asking me questions I still don’t have an answer for. Then Kara made a comment about how I should have been more considerate for the girl, that she was a kid.” Alex sighs, a bit embarrassed. “I snapped, even though she’s not wrong, but honestly, I don’t think I was that intimidating!”

“Danvers, you’re always terrifying,” Maggie snickers. She masks her chuckle into a cough when her very serious and absolutely not amused fiancée raises an eyebrow at her.

“Anyway, next thing we know, all hell breaks loose, _id est_ wind, rain, lightning, and still a lot of shouting.”

“And then?”

Alex rolls her eyes.

“You know the rest!” she complains. “You arrived, we calmed down, the storm…”

“Calmed down too,” Maggie interrupts, an amused smile on her face.

Her fiancée halts her sentence, disbelieving.

“Are you insinuating this cloud is somehow linked to my emotional state? Because that’s absurd.”

“Why not?” she challenges Alex, not taken aback by this lack of confidence in her hypothesis. “The rain either slows down or stops when you’re distracted from your troubles. A frustrating test result or a fiancée leaving to do her job? The drizzle comes back! A depressing hour stuck on a roof? Heavy downpour all along!”

Maggie pauses and checks the sky, still too dark for her taste. With a grin, she closes the distance to her fiancée who gasps, not expecting the embrace. As she deepens the kiss, she feels Alex finally relaxing in her arms. When she moves back, she waits for her fiancée to reopen her eyes, before putting the umbrella aside.

The cloud above their heads has cleared up enough to let some of the sun rays pass through it. The mist that stills falls on them is so light they aren't even bothered by it. The colorful arc that results from the combination takes their breath away, and Maggie almost forgets the point she was trying to make.

“See?” she whispered, amazed. “You can even make rainbows from your happiness…”

They enjoy the view for a while until the drizzle stops and the cloud goes back to the fluffy cotton they had observed after their lunch. They should move away, go back inside. Alex is drenched and has been for a while. She should at least get a change of clothes, if not a well-deserved warm shower. Maggie wouldn’t say no either to such a plan.

But right now, they feel content staying there, relishing in each other company, far from the noise and the stress of the DEO. Indifferent to the rest of the world, they look down to the city, contemplating the sun setting over the ocean.

They stand up when the sky is too dark to distinguish it from the water. They shiver from the coldness of their wet clothes as they go down the stairs to a lower floor.

“You haven’t told me yet what you found out this afternoon,” Alex comments, halfway through their descent.

“M’gann was as clueless as J’onn,” Maggie sighs. “I went back to where you met the girl, hoping it would give me a hint of what to look for. The part of the docks she was in is quite isolated. I assume she wanted a quiet place to test herself.”

The rest are mostly guesses she made while trying to understand the kid.

“If she lives in the city, there’s no way she could have done what you described in a residential area without getting noticed by someone. She’s too young to drive, so she needed another way to reach the warehouse. I’ve found a bike locked nearby, if it’s hers she will need to pick it up.”

On her way back to the DEO, she had given a call to Kara, asking for news while summarizing her afternoon.

“Winn is also checking if there are any surveillance cameras on the streets that lead to the closest bus stops and metro stations. If she ran away after meeting you, she may have gone to one of these locations to get back home.”

“In a nutshell, we’re waiting for Winn to find a lead,” Alex mumbles, disappointed.

“Yes,” Maggie admits. “But at least we know why your little pet transforms, which means it’s safe enough for us to enjoy our own bed tonight.”

Her fiancée stops at the bottom of the stairs and wavers, a hand on the door to the DEO offices, before turning back to Maggie.

“Are you sure about that?”

Her voice is soft as she comforts Alex.

“Absolutely.” She pauses, before adding playfully. “In the worst case, I’m sure I’ll find a way to distract you…”

Her fiancée rolls her eyes, putting her best annoyed-face on, but Maggie only chuckles. She doesn’t need a white and fluffy cloud to see through that.

\----------

It takes Winn two more days to find the teenage girl – who was, in fact, not an alien –, and a few more hours for the meta-human to figure out how to set Alex pet-free.

This lets Maggie plenty of opportunities to tease her fiancée about how the terrifying Special Agent wears her heart on her sleeve. Or, well, on a cloud.

**Author's Note:**

> “Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make tall ships carry low sails” is an old weather proverb. The mare’s tails are caused by high cirrus clouds while the mackerel scales are small clumpy cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds resembling fish scales in the sky. Both suggest a storm about to come. Thus the need for large sailing ships (back to when they were common) to lower their sails, for protection from the accompanying high winds.


End file.
